


irregularly scheduled programming

by sapphicish



Category: WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Gen, posting this right before i go watch the finale im scared we're all scared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29856543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: (“I like to be helpful,” Agatha told the interviewer, who was actually a real albeit extremely one-dimensional character in Wanda's little universe when yours truly wasn't the one behind the camera, “what else are extremely good-looking and conveniently-placed neighbors for?”)
Relationships: Agatha Harkness & Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	irregularly scheduled programming

**Author's Note:**

> takes place around/in the 2010s era before the confrontation between them but acts as if agatha spent less time sticking wanda's kids in her witch-basement and more time comforting her for some reason
> 
> i am very slowly making them closer and closer to kissing on the mouth which means it has to happen one of these days!

Wanda was stressed.

Agatha could tell because things in her peripheral vision kept changing. When she turned around to get her coffee off the table, the cup had changed from her favorite print – a cheerful, cartoonish rabbit face – to a simple black and white mug, not black and white like an opposite print but black and white like _drained of color._ She watched it for three minutes and it fizzled in her fingers, static sparking, and it changed back to the rabbit. Then black and white again. Then the curtains changed to the ugly floral print ones from the 50s set. And the rug started to change too.

And that was when Agatha decided that she had to do something, unless she wanted to be stuck again in a black-and-white sitcom where she had to make a lot of dated references and laugh over tea with agonized mind-controlled people who were as boring to talk to as you'd expect, and only slightly as self-aware as they should have been.

Wanda answered on Agatha's first knock, looking frazzled, leaning close in and filling the doorway as much as possible to hide something behind her Agatha guessed was either an animal or an ugly armchair glitched in from the 70s set.

Something made an awful noise, so she was willing to bet it was an animal. 

Agatha, in perfect Agnes form, pretended not to hear and beamed her brightest smile instead. “Wanda! I was about to head out to Trader Joe's to get some..."

What did Trader Joe's even sell? Did they have one here? Agatha was willing to bet Wanda had no idea, and honestly, neither did she. Of all the time she'd spent in Westview, very little of it was spent shopping. Not for food, anyway. Agatha was a fine cook, but the usefulness of being a witch meant that she could just conjure up food any time she liked. Or, more often because it entertained her, steal it from neighbors' houses with just a flick of a finger.

She was glad they'd moved up the timeline this quick, because the jello salads from the 50s made her want to scream, even if they _were_ fun to put together and make as disgusting as possible for other people.

“Some...?” Wanda prompted, still squeezing herself in against the door and trying to make herself taller as something squawked behind her again.

“Sorry,” Agatha said, “forgot my line. Groceries, I want to get some groceries. Come with me? Ralph is out golfing again and I'd be better off asking the rabbit to come shopping with me.”

She laughed loudly at her own joke.

Wanda stared at her blankly, either miles away in her head or trying to decipher good tried-and-true Agnes-style zaniness. It didn't last. She cleared her throat and looked over a shoulder, then back to Agatha again, shaking her head a little. “I'm sorry, I'm a little—“ Her voice raised to a higher pitch, presumably to mask the sound of something crowing behind her, “Tied up! At the moment!”

Agatha frowned, making sure she looked as disappointed as possible. “Oh. All right. Well, can I come in for a little bit? I'll be honest with you—“ She sighed, dropping her shoulders like there was some invisible weight pressing them down all the sudden, “I'm feeling a little antsy.”

Wanda, the dear, didn't seem to think that was suspicious at all. Instead, she blurted out, “You too?” and there was silence instead of the audience laughter Agatha had almost grown used to since the black-and-white eras, but the laughter was implied.

That was another thing.

Agatha hated the jello salads, and she'd also hated all the damn laughing everywhere she went as long as Wanda was around. It was utterly silent otherwise, but when she was talking to Wanda, there it was, dozens of voices in synchronized cackling if she even mentioned Ralph. She got it, but _honestly,_ the sitcom thing – it was a little too much for her.

She was determined for the very first question she asked Wanda when she did her grand unveiling of herself some time down the line to be something like, _hey, what's up with the sitcoms?_

For now, she grinned a little and gently nudged the door further open. Whatever had been making all that noise had disappeared, and Wanda seemed to notice it as soon as she did, because she stepped back with a sigh of relief.

“Can I come in? We can be antsy together.” Agatha gave Wanda a quiet, pleading sort of look she knew worked on emotionally vulnerable people all the time.

Wanda pressed her lips together. She looked miserable, and tired, and Vision was nowhere to be seen, not the usual cheerful shadow of a husband behind her or in the background or somewhere out in the yard playing with the boys, who Agatha noted were nowhere to be seen either.

“I'm sorry, Agnes,” Wanda said, and started easing the door shut again, while the lawn started draining of color and the windows started flickering, “I have a migraine.”

Agatha shoved it back open with all her might and stepped inside, because what else was she going to do? Not go back to 50s dresses, that was for sure. “Oh, great! I have something for that!” She dug around in her purse and then victoriously held high a bottle of aspirin. “I always keep them with me. I mean, I _am_ married. I'd be in a psych ward by now without these little beauties!”

Wanda stood there helplessly as Agatha walked inside, and when she heard the door close behind her she went straight to the kitchen and looked around, knowing that she wouldn't be stopped. Wanda never stopped wacky neighbor Agnes.

It was more intact than she'd expected, and for the time being things had stopped changing. She liked to think of it as not-quite-physically, not-quite-literally, smacking Wanda out of her approaching panic attack.

Besides, she thought as she filled a glass of water and poured out a couple of the little tablets into the cap, she was doing all of them a service. Every single person in Westview should have gotten on their hands and knees and thanked her immediately for what she was doing, frankly. Saving them from going backwards.

But would she get that?

No, of course not.

She never got that.

(“I like to be helpful,” Agatha told the interviewer, who was actually a real albeit extremely one-dimensional character in Wanda's little universe when yours truly wasn't the one behind the camera, “what else are extremely good-looking and conveniently-placed neighbors for?”)

When Agatha made it out of the kitchen – after a bit of snooping around in Wanda's cabinets just for fun and only encountering disappointment when she found absolutely _nothing_ fun – it was to Wanda standing stock still in the middle of the living room, staring at a lamp that kept going back and forth between the 70s and 90s set and never settling. When Agatha cleared her throat, it snapped back to modern-day and stayed there.

She pretended, as she did with all things, that she hadn't seen it and held out the glass and the pills for Wanda to take. The woman maybe spent a little too long staring at the pills, but eventually she tipped them back into her mouth and washed them down with a gulp of water, sinking slowly onto the couch like all the tense, anxious energy had drained out of her the moment she succumbed to the idea of being taken care of by someone.

Agatha clicked her tongue and sat down next to Wanda. “C'mere, honey.”

“What?” Wanda gave her one of those confused, wide-eyed little looks, like Bambi in the headlights or whatever. Agatha wanted to pinch her little cheeks and say, _I know what you're up to._

“ _Come here,_ ” she repeated, sitting down next to her fellow witch and pulling at her until, in one sharp yank, she just fell right into Agatha's side. “It's all right. Just _relax,_ sugar plum. Don't worry, I'm not making a move. When I do, you'll know it.” She laughed brightly.

Wanda didn't.

But Wanda's laughter was usually reserved for other occasions, and Agatha didn't take offense to that. She amused herself plenty for the both of them anyway, and it wasn't like this was some ordinary circumstance.

They'd never been this close before. 

Agatha shifted Wanda's head into her lap and encouraged her to stretch her legs out over the rest of the sofa, trailing her fingers through the soft red hair that pooled across her thighs.

“Agnes,” Wanda muttered, eyes flicking open to look up at her. She sounded like she wanted to give in, but knew that she shouldn't.

It made Agatha smile. She promptly slid her hand over the woman's face. “Shh. Didn't I tell you to relax? This won't work if you don't relax.”

“What won't work?” Wanda asked, but Agatha was already doing it, moving her fingers in slow, deep circles against her temples, massaging the tension from there and from her jaw, and doing the same with what little of her shoulders she could reach.

There was a vase across the room, filled with bright flowers, and it flickered violently when Agatha touched Wanda. _Don't you dare,_ Agatha thought, but focused on her touches, on the way Wanda melted into them. When she looked up again, the vase was just as it was supposed to be, and no longer rippling with static like a faulty old TV screen.

Agatha looked at Wanda next. She was quiet then, her breathing slowing, her hands folded uncertainly over her stomach. She kept twitching her foot like she wanted to use it to push herself up with the rest of her, but she didn't, and she kept opening her eyes a little like she wanted to make sure Agatha wasn't doing anything nefarious.

Agatha, of course, was at her most well-behaved since entering the town. There was no magic, no tricks, no plots and plans, not even a machination or two.

Frankly, it felt a little odd, but she was willing to bet Wanda felt that she was in the stranger position.

“Better?” she whispered.

“ _Mmm._ ” Wanda exhaled, surprisingly pliable. Or maybe it wasn't so surprising after all. All this woman needed was a tender caring touch, and it showed in everything she did. And Vision wasn't here at the moment, so she would have to do, right?

Right.

Agatha slid her fingers through Wanda's hair, and traced them across her features, feeling the pursing of her lips and the tiny furrow of her brows as she tried to relax.

Her skin was _incredibly_ soft. Agatha wondered offhandedly if she used moisturizer or if she used magic to keep it that way...

“What?”

Wanda's eyes had opened and she was staring at her, and that was what made Agatha realize she'd said all of that out loud.

“The magic of youth,” Agatha said with a little laugh, recovering in a quick, clean, _precise_ manner that should have gotten her an Emmy nomination then and there, “not all of us still have it, you know!”

Agatha didn't know how it worked, but she wasn't surprised that it did. Wanda closed her eyes again, submitting to the little pieces inside of her that Agatha knew just wanted to rest, to sleep, to be relaxed and comforted and soothed.

Poor thing.

Poor, sweet, incredibly dangerous thing.

Agatha rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, knowing the cameras weren't watching. If Wanda didn't see something, neither did the cameras.

That was what Agatha liked about this whole thing, this whole _Westview_ thing, this whole _sitcom_ thing.

Wanda didn't see a _lot,_ and that was surprising, for a witch who had masterminded this entire scheme in broad daylight.

At long last there was a silence; no more static licking along the corners of the ceiling, no more 70s wallpaper replacing the current like it was stripping back the new by force. Agatha felt the warmth of Wanda's body against hers, listened to her quiet breaths in and out. She didn't snore, which surprised Agatha. She'd definitely taken Wanda for a secret snorer.

She wondered what other secrets she had in store.

She considered it as she stood up, careful not to jostle Wanda, and draped a blanket over her and stuck a pillow under her head as a replacement for her lap. On a whim, she leaned down and gave Wanda a kiss on the forehead. It just seemed like the kind of thing a person in Agnes' position would do. And she was still Agnes, for now, even if the cameras weren't watching.

She looked around, thinking about snooping, toying with the power that sat and dripped into this place like a leaky tap that sometimes got turned on full blast. She considered investigating. Maybe Wanda had a little secret witch-basement of her own; maybe she had captives, ancient tomes, runes and torture tools...

Agatha looked at Wanda on the couch and snorted an undignified laugh.

Yeah, right.

She took her curiosity in both hands and stored it away for the time being, and then slipped out the door.

She had all the time in the world to figure out what Wanda Maximoff's game was.

Besides, Agatha was patient.

And Westview wasn't going anywhere.


End file.
